My dad Ralph Wilcox joined the
CCC when he was 16 from a starving existence in Wellington, Kansas in 1933.
He had to lie about his age to get into CCC...probably the only lie he ever
told in his life. He looks like a full grown man in his CCC pictures, when
in fact he was only 15. If not for the CCC he would have starved. The CCC
in the west during the dust bowl was not a means of getting a job, it was
a means of survival. Because he joined up, he was able to send money home
to my grandmother. Its hard to believe today how much money a dollar a day
was back then.

He was assigned to Company 849. This
Company was assigned to Camp P-35-WY near Ten Sleep Wyoming in the Big Horn
Mountains, which he called Tent City. There he earned a dollar a day and
room and board while building Meadowlark Lake Dam.

With much, pride he took me to Ten Sleep
when I was 17 yrs old to see what they had created. Dad died in 1977. With
much pride, in 1997 I took my daughter and grandchildren and stood on the
dam at Meadowlark Lake. The wind wispers their names.

During World War Two, Ralph P. Wilcox,
joined the navy, going to training on the Great Lakes in 1943. He then
joined the crew of the USS Shangri La, CV-38. He was a plankowner on
this fast carrier. He served proudly aboard her during WWII from her Christening
until March 1946. Everything he did from that day forward was measured against
that privilege, for truely, a privilege is what he considered it.